


Kushiel's Keys

by vibishan



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibishan/pseuds/vibishan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not wise to meddle with D'Angelines in the affairs of love - but the Great Bear Herself is not cowed by shining birds. A story of a world, and a witch, that might have been, if Morwen had succeeded in getting a half-D'angeline child to balance out Aniel, if Dorelai had lived and Imriel been much more fastidious with his croonie-stone, and his love with Sidonie had no time to develop a strong foundation before she was ensorceled, if he had been far away in Alba with his young son when the curse was cast. This is the story of a brother and a sister, of hybrids and heritage, of forgiveness and ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kushiel's Keys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivy/gifts).



Once my brother asked me when I learned that my mother was a witch.

He never understood my people very well. What a backward question. As a child, I did not think of her as a woman who changed into a bear, nor did she hide it only to reveal it. I thought of her as my mother, who came in different faces, who curled around me heavy with fur in the winter, and was sometimes hard to stir, who had deft, twiglike fingers as she taught me to draw a bow or tie a _ketch_ thread with the right knot. None of it was mysterious to me; I slept in her arms or on her broad brown back, knew all her sharp and lumbering voices.

For me, the revelation was that others found it strange. It came in a flurry of gradual signs, like autumn, cool breezes and swallows in formation and curling leaves. When the first inkling brushed me, I was sitting at Aunt Heulwen’s knee, learning to make ink from vinegar and crushed walnut shells, tracing a sign in the soft ash-heavy earth by the firepit, a sign I knew was good for holding and affixing things, to help the ink set better. When I blinked into the twilight, I could see the mark had taken well, glowing in the faint depressions left by my fingertip. Aunt Heulwen laughed softly when she saw, and her fingertips traced the skin around my eyes.

“Someday, you’ll get claws just like your mother, won’t you Moirin?”

“I will?”

“I don’t doubt. The Maghuinn Dhonn has given you very strong gifts, for a girl your age.”

“…but what does that have to do with my _face_ ,” I wanted to know. She laughed, the way adults laugh at children who are still learning what seems so obvious later.

“When a witch of the Maghuinn Dhonn learns to transform into Her shape, we mark them, to honor the depth of their magic and devotion to Her.” She gestured with a thin bronze needle at the ink stewing in the pot. “I did your mother’s claws myself. Perhaps someday I’ll be the one to do yours.”

Aunt Heulwen had more to say, and no doubt I had a great deal more to learn, but it was lost like dead branches knocked and swept away by sudden thunderstorms. My world was upside down. Of the people I saw often, only my mother and Berlik had the claws on their faces, which I always thought was simply _how they looked_ , just like birds and beasts all have their markings. But no; they had _achieved_ them, just like they had achieved their bears’ shapes. They had been born with only one skin, like me, and everyone else I knew was similarly singular, rather than speaking to me always in a human tongue out of convenience, as I had thought, when I thought about it at all.

Aunt Heulwen thought I would earn it too. I thought about the point of the bronze needle, sharp and fine, polished and then dipped in black so close to the softness of the eye, and shivered with feelings I could not name underneath my pleased pride, deep rustling and the scrape of claws on stone, heavy footsteps, a twist in my stomach that was neither hunger nor fear.

!

My mother had certain very specific ideas about my destiny.

She took me to the edge of the _taisgaidh_ roads that bordered Castle Clunderry when I was eight, and we watched the Cullach Gorrym come and go from the twilight. I knew patience by then (it is essential in both hunting and magic) so I stayed still and quiet with her – I don’t know how long, precisely. It is much harder to judge time by the sun in the twilight, where the angles of the shadows fill themselves back in with soft glowing.

Eventually, she broke our vigil, moved to point out a boy, about my age, practicing his horsemanship on a sleek dappled pony. I almost laughed, because he was so _bright_ , fierce and keen and lovely, straining and effortless at once, black hair streaming like a gasp of clear night behind him, blue eyes so deep and pure I could see the richness of them even in the soft mutedness of the twilight. He looked delighted and a little desperate at once, like there was nothing better than the wind on his face as he rode, and nothing worse than whatever he was trying to leave in his wake. His eyes were determinedly open, focused straight ahead, dark and passionate in a way that made me think of the deepest water, tumultuous like a spring storm.

Even if she hadn’t pointed, I wouldn’t have looked at anyone else; he was the most interesting and most lovely person I’d ever seen.

“That’s your brother, Moirin,” my mother said, her voice low and ominous.

I gaped.

“What? Then why is he here and not with _us_?” It seemed incredibly unfair that I had been robbed of knowing him for so long, if we were kin. A flash of ambition flicked through my mind, a bright dream like light on the feathers of an elusive, iridescent bird. “Are we here to steal him back?”

My mother’s mouth was a flat line, and she scraped one of her feet against the earth restlessly, a habit she picked up in her bear-shape, a sign of low irritation.

“No. He is not Maghuin Dhonn, Moirin. He is the son of your father, who is D’Angeline, and Dorelai mab Breidia, Lady of Clunderry.”

“I have a _father_?” Even louder, this time, and if we were not in the twilight, the boy would certainly have heard us, even though he was moving away from us again, taking a circuit back toward his governors in a smooth loping canter. She had never, ever mentioned a father before, and nor had anyone else. I asked Berlik, once, if he were my father, but he looked very solemn and shook his head and turned into a bear before I could ask any more questions, so I assumed that perhaps witches did not need a father to have children.

“Yes, but he’s dead,” snapped my mother. She was not trying to be cruel – she always hated distractions when she was set on something, and I had deviated too long from what she set out to accomplish with this visit. I had never longed for a father, so I did not _grieve_ when I heard it, but I did feel quite disgruntled, to discover a father and loose him in the space of three heartbeats.

“The boy is what matters,” she said firmly, and although I wanted to sulk, I also wanted very much to know more about him, so I reluctantly nodded.

“He may seem like a bright child, Moirin, but he will be a monstrous man. We have seen it. When the time comes, you will oppose him, for the protection of our people and our sacred places.”

She got like that when she spoke about _things seen_. Solemn and elaborate, like the sheer and intricate faces of cliffs. But I was not overly impressed, and – quite enamored with the idea of a brother – found this even more unfair than the truth about my dead father. Already chastened, though, I thought better of saying so aloud.

She explained that it was important for me to know what would be needed of me, and why it was so vital. That I must learn everything my elders had to teach me, swiftly and well, that I must brace myself for the storm I had already glimpsed in my brother’s eyes. That I was to remember him as my enemy.

I listened carefully to all of it. And as soon as I could in the days that followed, when I was supposed to be sitting in high treetops with my eyes closed, learning to hear voices on the wind, I snuck off to visit him.

!

When I was young – six, perhaps, two years before my mother took me to see Aniel that first time – I shot a quail for supper, poorly, in the wing. It was frenzied, bloody and flapping, and I crept up on it, seized it in small hands. It almost thrashed away from me, small as I was, and – angry at my own failure to do the thing neatly, and angry at the bird for nearly besting me, and clumsy with small hands. I snapped the big, delicate bones in the other wing, instead of twisting the neck right away. The quail make a terrible, tiny noise, a squawk transmuted and drained by agony, and I felt – good. Strong, filled with a clashing, clanging red fire that was nothing like the warm steady gold of my _diadh-anam._ There was crashing, ringing noise, and the color of deep bronze eagle feathers, terrible strong wings beating inside me.

And I felt, unmistakably, my diadh-anam dwindle, receding in the face of whatever I had let inside, by savoring the innocent creature’s pain, not flaring low like it sometimes did in warning, but disappearing, dripping away between my ribs like a handful of water through my fingers. In a clean flash of panic, I killed the bird, one swift twist of my desperate hands, barely thought.

The strange power vanished as quickly as it came. In the hollowness it left, like wind whooshing through a clearing, my _diadh-anam_ simmered gently back. I resolved that whatever strange power I had found in cruelty, I wanted no part of it. 

!

I almost despaired of finding him at first. Because it was stone, I’d expected the castle to be one large cavern inside, or a few sequential chambers, like caves, but it was so much more intricate, narrow passages and stairwells and dozens of doors, most of them closed, which I could not open in the twilight without rousing suspicion. And there was no soft earth or underbrush for my quarry to leave traces in. I thought about dripping a bit my blood onto a feather, and letting it fly – but probably it would only seek out my mother instead, and I had no way to tune it to him, not even his name.

But patience and persistence served me well, and eventually I saw him through a propped-open doorway, sitting with a book in the window. He looked as pretty still as he did in motion, like carved figurine, elegantly framed, long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks in the warm sunlight. I liked him even better for choosing the window, glad to feel the free air on my face again after what felt like hours and hours of creeping (but was probably one, at the most). I slipped inside the room and out of the twilight.

“Hello.”

He jerked and stared at me, looking both absurd and fierce like a startled owl.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“I’m Moirin mac Morwen of the Maghuin Dhonn,” I said. And then, as though it were quite obvious – because it _was_ , but also because I wanted him to be embarrassed enough not to ask much more about it, since I was technically trespassing, being quite off _tasgaidh_ roads, and to simply accept my presence for a little while - “The door was open.”

It worked beautifully; he flushed and then scowled and then suddenly took on a clear expression, tossing his hair just once, and pretended he hadn’t done either of the previous things.

“Well, of course. But I’ve never seen you at Clunderry before, Moirin mac Morwen. Where have you come from, and why?” Brisk, now, rather than surprised, with a formality that sounded odd to me, even used to my mother’s pronunciations, especially in the voice of an eight year old boy. But it suited him too, the clean edges of it, the accordance of a certain amount of respect but a crisp expectation of obedience. I didn’t mind obliging. If I wanted to know him, the truth seemed best.

“The forest. I live in the wild places with my mother. I came because she said we were kin. That your father is the same as mine.”

If I’d hope it would excite him as much as it had me, as I was disappointed. His face went tight for a moment, hiding hurt, but then he did seem curious, at least, tilting his head.

“You do have the eyes,” he said slowly. “You look more like me than like him. Because we’re both half-Alban, I guess.”

“I do?” I asked. It seemed both strange and wonderful that I had had eyes like that in my head all my life. I filed the commonality away, too – a few plucked eyelashes added to the fetch-feather would probably do, if I ever had a need. 

He nodded, more solemnly than the question really warranted, I thought, no matter how lovely our eyes were. He seemed both reticent to explain why he was looking like that and yet unwillingly to say anything else without acknowledging it. But I didn’t care about that mystery.

“I told you who I am. What’s your name?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you?”

“No, _obviously_.”

He looked for a moment like he was about to be angry, then seemed to gather himself with a huffing breath. He dropped the book on his seat and pushed off it, a scrambling motion that somehow transformed into a bow as smooth as the new ice on a pond. 

“Then I supposed I’ve been terribly rude. I am Aniel mab Dorelai de la Courcel.”

It should have sounded very odd, Cruithne and D’Angeline together. But it didn’t, somehow – he had so respectful precision in every line of him that he made everything seem just ride. He reached for my hand, which I let him take despite some confusion, and kissed it, which made me laugh – it was strange and perfect in just the same way.

“I think I like you, Aniel mab Dorelai de la Courcel.” I tried to say it just the way he had, elegant and confident and fine. It worked, too; I could tell, just the same way I could tell when a spell had gone right. There was a shiver and a power in it. “I hoped I would. I’ve never had a brother before. “

He smiled, then, sweet but fascinated too, a glint like a hawk on the wing.

“I have another sister but she’s little and boring,” he said, dismissing her with another brisk hair toss. “You’re not boring at all, Moiren mac Morwen of the wilds. I should like you to visit often. Will you come? You can share my honeycakes, if you like.”

“Yes! I promise I will! Only I might not be able to get away often. My mother doesn’t know.” 

The glint grew. 

“A secret. Then we are _conspirators_.” I didn’t know that word, but he was more than pleased to explain it. We did have honeycakes that visit – although we stole them from the cook, with a lot of audacious scuttling, so they were not really his to promise. But they were delicious.

!

My visits _were_ rare, sometimes only once a year. It wasn’t long before my mother insisted on traveling to another region of Alba, to learn new things from other members of our clan, and I had no way to protest that wouldn’t arouse her suspicions. And even if I could have thought of one, I might not have used it – as much as I liked Aniel, I doubt I would have been willing to live in just one place, even for him.

But when we were close enough and I did manage to sneak away, our time together was always delightful. Once, he taught me to hunt with a small gyrfalcon, which was wondrous – the essence of natural predation and human focus, twined into a single effort. Once I taught him how to climb trees properly, and how to mimic dozens of birdcalls. Once we stole _uisghe_ , fire and the memory of honey on our tongues as we lazed in the grass by the river, and he told me tales of our wicked ancestress, She Of The Eyes, taking a vicious glee in my shock and awe at every twist and turn.

When I asked what Terre D’Ange was like now, though, he grew quiet.

“Bad,” he would only say. “Conquered, but not by _her_ betrayal.” He shook with quiet, bitter rage, and I held him for a long time.

!

I didn’t speak of magic with Aniel. I hadn’t meant to hide it from him. I simply didn’t _think_ of it as special, although I knew the other clans of Alba had fewer gifts than the Maghuin Dhonn. It was just that I spent so _much_ of my time learning deeper and more intricate magics, and my time with Aniel was my escape from it, easy freedom with no lessons and no strange tasks and no destiny. I could lose myself for a little while racing him in vicious, exhilarating or exploring Castle Clunderry’s hidden places or just listening to his voice. I never imagined, not once, that he would _care_. His own mother had the woad-markings for dreaming true dreams.

But he did care.

He cared a great deal.

!

We were sneaking about where we shouldn’t have been, spying on some of the Castle’s guests, who had arrived in anticipation of the Feast of the Dead, rifling through their things. It was curiosity and capriciousness, nothing more – we never took anything, enjoying the thrill of misbehaving more than anything else. But footsteps sounded in the hall and a key turned in the lock. With Aniel staring at the door in a moment’s panic, I grabbed his arm, jerking us both swiftly into the twilight.

He screamed, while the person whose rooms we had invaded scurried about obliviously, grabbing a forgotten cloak before striding back into the hall. I let it go, shaken, hoping the shock would pass when we returned to the daylight world. We had only been in the twilight for perhaps twenty seconds, all told. 

“It’s okay,” I promised him, “I was just hiding us. I’m –“

 _Sorry_ , I meant to say, not for the magic itself but just for startling him so badly. But instead of calming, his fear turned to fury.

“You _are_ a witch. I knew it, I _knew_ it, you’re just like rest of your wicked bear-clan, aren’t you? How long have been putting spells on me? _Stealing_ pieces –”

I could barely answer him, I was so stunned by the reaction. I’d known he could be volatile, could have a temper, but it had never turned on me before, and over something so simple, so obvious, as a few seconds out of step with the world. I gaped, _hurt_ , and then I got mad.

“ _Of course I’m a witch_ ,” I hissed back. “I’ve always been a witch, I’ve not even got my monthlies yet but I’m the strongest witch in four generations, and I _never_ bespelled you, you paranoid little toad –“

“ _How could you do that to me?_ ” he thundered back, as though he hadn’t heard anything I said at all, as though he _couldn’t_ hear it. “How could you – magic is _evil_ , Moirin, it twists people against themselves and their will, it makes them forget who they love, it’s heresy and madness and it’s _wrong_. Elua, I let you into my _house_ , I let you play with my _sister_ –“

He had called me sister for years, by then; hearing him refer to Carys like his only sister made me see red.

“You know _nothing_ about magic,” I screamed, heedless of who would hear. I wanted to vanish but he was staring straight at me, so I spun to march toward the door. If he hated me, then I would hate him back, and all the more for his betrayal; I would be the implacable nemesis my mother always wanted. I would destroy him before he could vent his terrible hatred.

“You _dare_ say-“ his hand caught my shoulder, long and find-boned and strong, and he whirled me back around, shoved me hard against the stone walls of the castle. My righteous resolve – my thoughts entire - scattered like minnows with a stone tossed among them. My head was all ache and echoes, bright white sparks that reminded me of the twilight and were nothing like it at all. I blinked fast, gulped a breath, tried to clear my sight. 

And there were his eyes, his depthless beautiful Shahrizai eyes, blue enough to drown in, and _sharp_. I could feel his breath, and his heartbeat, and his phallus through his breaches. He _liked_ this. It was one shock too much. Suddenly my anger flared inside me again, strong and bright as the flame of my _diadh-anam._

“ _You_ are the one who is full of heresy and madness, Aniel de la Courcel,” I spat, landing a gobbet right in one of his lovely eyes, and kneed him hard between the legs. He groaned and crumpled and twisted, and for a moment his eyes were shut. I slipped out of the daylight world like my knife out of it’s sheathe, grabbing his hair and setting the blade to his through, commanding the twilight to let him to hear me.

“I have never forced you to do _anything_. I have never lied to you. You are a treacherous, poisonous snake just like that Melisande.” I felt full of noise, crashing symbols and pounding wingbeats and baying dogs. My face felt heavy and stiff and full of terrible momentum, a bronze mask full of proclamation. Aniel whimpered, fury and terror, hissed through his bared teeth in pain, which only made the clamor inside me want more. I could cut him from the twilight, I knew, and I did it, the shallowest trickle of blood appearing on his neck. I wondered what sounds he would make if I peeled away some of the skin of his shoulder.

And then I realized that I liked it, too. Just like I had with the Kingfisher, all those years ago.

I stumbled back, sick and horrified, loosing my grip on the twilight. Aniel snarled and lunged for me, but too shaky, stumbling and slow. I fled, and he did not catch me.

!

My mother found me a day later, livid and brittle with fear, as though she might go grey at her edges. I was curled in the hollow of a Yew tree, for protection against I knew not what, and for mourning.

My mother had brambles in her hair, and a certain slope-shouldered carriage that meant she had likely tracked me as a bear. I realized, belatedly, that the Yew would have stopped her scrying me the simple ways. It just felt – safer. 

“Moirin, what – what –” Whatever tirade she had planned her, her face crumpling in worry and sympathy and I pitched myself forward, into her arms. I was taller than her, by then, and it seemed terribly wrong in that moment. Sobbing, I told her the whole wretched story from start to finish.

She didn’t let go of me, stroked my hair in a way she hadn’t since I was young.

“Shhh, shh. It’s for the best. Tomorrow night we’ll go to the stones, and we can make sure the futures are still –“

For the best, of course, because of course she cared about her plans and her visions more than anything else, because it was _fine_ that he had hurt me, an ironically, inevitably fitting punishment for my disobeying her in the first, because the important thing was that I was ready to play may part.

She didn’t mean all of that, most likely, or didn’t mean it with her whole heart, but I was bitter and vulnerable, and I heard it as clearly as if she had shouted in my ear. And I was furious again, like stinging froth and surging waves layered on top of the messy, cold flood of my grief. I ripped myself away from her, and she looked so surprised. I just wanted to get _away_ , from my stupid hellbent prideful kin and all the impossible things they wanted from me. But I could not run from my mother as I had from Aniel – she could pursue me in bear shape with ease. And I could not go to the twilight, because she could follow just as easily.

In a moment of madness, barely aware of what I was doing, I grabbed a handful of leaves, mucky-brown with autumn, and threw them in her face. The confused flinch was enough for me to escape her eyes, but instead of drawing in the soft shadow dappled light when the sun has just sunk beneath the horizon, I dug within myself for the very opposite feeling, the sparkling scour of dawn, when the sun first heaves its unbearable edge into sight and rips open the darkness, the light that hurts your eyes.

The twilight is half a step toward the spirit world, toward the abode and essence of the gods. I threw myself, blind, in the opposite direction.

The world went flat and garish and alarming, my mother’s open-mouthed surprise a red wound, the sparkle as she tried to summon the twilight with my eyes still on her like a scatter of broken glass. I wavered, wobbled, felt as though I were standing on a very steep slope, realized I had not eaten since before fighting with Aniel an entire day before. The world warped, distended and monstrous, and I knew that wherever I was, I was sliding further and further into it. I stumbled, fell back through the hollow of the Yew and kept on falling, a riot of acidic color like bright insects swarming, stinging, a gasping tumble, and then at last I _slammed_ to a halt.

Dazed, I looked around. The forest and the yew and my mother were all gone. I was on a terrible, parched plain, blasted cinder-black, soaked and smeared red, cracks puffing noxious sulphuric yellow. The sky was indistinguishable from the ground, except that it was above and farther away, giving the place a horrid air of entrapment. There was no outside, no beyond, not here. I should have been terrified, but I was too worn out for more than dull horror.

The thing that had stopped my headlong buzzing fall was an iron gate, although the word does not really do it justice. It was massive, reaching farther than my eye could make out any detail, intricate and horrid, twisted organic shapes gnarled into strange interlocking angles, as though its iron struts were the bones of great mutilated monsters. I picked up a rock – it burned my hand, a little, but not enough to care – and slammed it against a heavy metal promontory. The resulting clang seemed at once pitifully small and far too loud, set off a buzzing, hissing gossip from things I could not see.

“Where am I?’ I demanded, screamed at the horrid, empty place. “Someone answer me!” I banged the rock again, and it shattered, peppering me with little shards that bled and stung.

A hot wind – full of grit like the armor-polishers at Clunderry used to scour metal, full of resounding bronze wingbeats. And then I saw him, as though he had been approaching all along, his tread so heavy, the bronze keys clanking at his belt terrible and yet magnificent, firey coals in his eyes. It was hard to concentrate on his face – hard to look straight at it. It made me feel so terribly small, as though every time I had lied to my mother, every time I had teased one of the other castle children to hear Aniel laugh, and laughed along with him, every possible fault laid bare. And it felt, too, that he loved me, that he loved me so deeply that it hurt him to behold my failures and cruelties, but that he would not look away. I choked down a sob. 

He rested a hand on my shoulder. Like the rock, it burned, but moreso, and I gasped and twisted, could not pull away any more than if I was pinned under a boulder.

“THIS IS THE PLACE THE YESHUITES CALL GEHENNA,” he said, in a voice like the roar of wildfire and and a thousand gongs beat at once. I was sure my ears were bleeding. “THE PLACE OF PUNISHMENT. FOR DESPITE ALL OUR BRANDING AND SCOURGING, THE WORST PUNISHMENT IS TO BE PARTED FROM GOD.”

Yes. Yes, that was what I had done, running away from my life and my destiny and the lovely gifts of my goddess, whose spark lay quiet and small in my breast, a low steady ember half-buried in ash.

“I’m sorry,” I choked. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know what to _do_. Can I make this right? Please?” Tears streamed down my face, hot, and yet they dried almost instantly, leaving tight salt-tracks renewing themselves on my cheeks. 

“YOU CAN SET MANY THINGS RIGHT, MOIRIN MAC MORWEN. THE FIGHT BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR BROTHER IS A REFLECTION OF MORE DIRE THINGS. YOUR MOTHER’S GODDESS AND YOUR FATHER’S GODS ARE WROTH WITH EACH OTHER, FOR SHE INTERFERED IN OUR AFFAIRS AND DEVASTATED OUR PEOPLE.” 

He was angry. Just the hint of his anger was crushing, like standng before a hurricane, or at the center of a lightning strike. I quailed and burned. But I did not apologize for the Maghuin Dhonn. Her magic was not kind, but in the time since my first visit to Aniel, my mother had explained her visions in more detail. I knew that magic _had_ been used to compel and control my father, that D’Angelines might call it heresy. But she used nothing he did not give her, and she called it survival. 

The spark of my _diadh-anam_ flickered brighter, pulsed with my heartbeat, and it was easier to stand under the terrible pressure of his attention. 

Kushiel, I realized, immediately and obviously, once I could think. Mighty Kushiel, with the keys to hell, where I had brought myself. I took a deep breath, though the air of that place burned too, broiled quietly in my lungs. 

“What must I do?” 

“YOU ARE THE KEY. YOU ARE THE PLACE WE MEET. YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE A BATTLEGROUND.” 

No. No, I certainly did not, shuddering at the thought. 

“THEN YOU MUST BE A TRUCE. THERE IS KINDNESS IN PAIN, MOIRIN MAC MORWEN, IF IT IS GIVEN THOUGHTFULLY.” I could have sobbed, for the kindness in his voice as he said it. “YOU ARE AFRAID OF MY GIFTS. THIS IS RIGHT, FOR THEY ARE FEARFUL, AND YOU HAVE HAD NO TEACHER. BUT YOU MUST EMBRACE ALL OF YOURSELF NOW. 

“But how do I –“ 

But that was all he had to say, apparently. Terrible bronze wings folded around me, and in a dizzying rush, I sprawled on the forest floor, red and aching, roots in my back. Nothing had ever felt so soothing, so cool and inexplicably lovely, as the knob of that root. 

My mother flung herself from the twilight, terrified, smile crushed open with relief, but if she said anything, I didn’t hear it, already slipping into a deep sleep. 

! 

“I have to see him,” I said as soon as I awoke, in a cottage I vaguely recognized from our travels, cool compresses on my body like a second patchwork pelt. My voice was cracked and dry as the ground had been in that horrible place. 

“You will do no such thing,” said my mother tightly, then peered at me, shaken and worried. “Where did you go, Moirin? What did you _do_?”

“”I went – it doesn’t matter. Mother, I talked to a _god_.” I broke off, coughing. “I think my destiny is even bigger than you thought. Please. Please, I – I know I betrayed your trust.”

The weight of Kushiel’s hand on my shoulder was unforgettable. I had done her wrong, for all I told myself it was harmless.

“I’m sorry. But I must see him.”

Her hand was tight on my wrist for a moment, and it ached and stung. But after long moments, she relented. She looked very tired, in that moment, old and small, although I do not think she was much over thirty.

“Very well. I will find him in the twilight, and –”

“No!” Another coughing fit. “No, mother. I’ll do it. But I may need to borrow some strength.” She sighed, but she did not ask if it could wait. If I had been charged by a god now, then it likely could not wait, especially with the Feast of the Dead coming that night.

She tied deadnettle leaves around my neck, so they rested in the notch below my throat, dabbed bear grease over my heart, and set a smooth little chip of oxhorn under my tongue. That done, she became her bear-self, resting one hot, heavy paw on my chest, below my small breasts. The shoulder Kushiel had touched tingled, and the horn in my mouth grew fiercely sour, and the deadnettle leaves shriveled into dust, dancing uncertainly before my mother’s breath. I felt immensely better, as though I’d rested for a week instead of only hours, and my mother yawned, showing dozens of long teeth, before stumbling back, small and woman-shaped, as I rubbed the deadnettle dust into my skin for the longest effect. I rose, shedding compresses and slipping on a shift waiting on a nearby chair, embraced her closely.

“Thank you, Mother. Thank you for everything.”

Then I went to find my brother.

A crow feather, because that felt correct, one eyelash from each eye, and a drop of blood from my upper arm, the combination all filled with the glow of the twilight and my desire to _find_. I breathed his name to blow it out of my hands; it caught, and flew, bobbing and weaving delicately through the air currents. I followed.

I found him on the riverbank by Clunderry, a place we had talked and played many times, sitting with his arms around his knees. He looked up at me, went a little pale under his warm golden skin, sick and baleful rather than angry. Not a boy and not a man; a coltish in-between creature, contemplating ruins, not sure what became of the world he knew.

“Evil has been done to your family with magic,” I said, just as I had confessed to my mother. “Some of it by my kin. For this, I apologize.” 

This was not at all what he expected, and he stared at me, nervous and uncertain, but also, with this beginning, willing to talk.

“Not all magic is evil, Aniel. Some of it is harmless and lovely; some of it is very dangerous, but that does not mean it cannot be used well. I want to – atone. I want to use my magic to help heal these wounds.”

“Do you hate me?” he asked slowly, softly, but there was a steadiness in him beneath it. He could still burn my world to the ground, I realized dimly, acquainted now as I felt with fire, if he felt he had no reason not to.

“Do you hate _me_?” I turned it around on him again, instead of being in a position to prove my answer.

“Aniel, please. We have loved each other for so long. Does that break so easily?”

Slowly, slowly, he shook his head.

“I. Don’t hate you. I couldn’t, even when I wanted to. I was just so shocked and angry.”

“So was I,” I said, but low, not sharply. A call for understanding, not accusation.

“I’m still afraid, though.” There could be no better sign of his willingness to be reconciled; Aniel admitted fear very, very rarely. It was not a thing he allowed people to see if he did not care for them and trust them; often not even if he did.

“Would you let me show you? What I did before? There’s no harm or trap or compulsion in it, I swear.”

Cautiously, he put his hand out. I took it, and it felt simple and human and warm despite the faint autumn chill. I squeezed it gently, reassurance and companionship.

“You have to close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t work if anyone is looking at me. Just do it, Ani.”

I didn’t ask him to trust me; he wouldn’t have if I did. But having admitted fear, he hated all the more to look like a coward, so he huffed and obeyed. Gingerly, I breathed the twilight out around us.

“Okay.”

He opened his eyes, swallowed nervously, gasped a little at the rushing silver of the river, which was even more beautiful than most things in the twilight.

“People can’t see us, like this, or hear us unless we wish. And I can speak to the spirits of animals from here. But it’s just – another edge to the world, that’s all.”

Shakily, he nodded. Then took a deep breath, said in a long rush, as though he’d been holding it back and in the secretive embrace of the twilight, a place that wasn’t quite real and where he could never be overheard, “IthinkmaybeIhavetruedreams.”

It was my turn to be shocked, a little.

“But. I thought only women of your line had true dreams?”

He fidgeted. I’d never seen him so - rawly uncomfortable.

“Normally. But I don’t know – I don’t think I dreamed the future. I think I dreamed the past.”

“What did you see?”

“My – our father.” A moment to control his emotions, and then he continued. “I saw him pleading with a beautiful golden woman. She looked so confused, and so sad. He tried to take her hand and a guard knocked him unconscious. He was dragged to a cell, while the woman pleaded for mercy, saying he was pitiful and mad. And a man in armor and a feathered helmet promised he would be spared, but later I saw him speaking to a very dark-skinned man with jewels, saying to poison him. There was a bottle and a needle, but – it wasn’t poison. It was something else, to mimic it, but the man took his body to a ship. I think he’s alive, Moirin. I think he’s been alive this whole time. And I think he needs help.”

“Then we will.”

!

We decided, first, to try to reach his spirit, just in case Aniel was wrong about his dreams. It was the Feast of the Dead that night, and although Imriel had never had never spoken to Aniel before, that didn’t mean for certain that he lived.

There were feasts and festivities at Clunderry, but Aniel’s mercurial moods were well known; no one marked his uneasiness or his early departure as unusual. As sunset approached, I took him back to the riverbank.

“This is a good place for it. The earth remembers our friendship here, and he is the blood between us. And the river goes to the sea, and Terre D’Ange and the rest are past it; we will make it a path.”

I took him into the twilight with the real evening light growing long shadows around us. I cut his arm and mine, catching the blood in a swan’s eggshell. Normally I would have used a duck’s, but swans are the sign of House Courcel. An omen of our own devising. I dipped my fingers into the mix, flicked a few droplets onto the ground, more into the river. I prayed to the Maghuin Dhonn to be gracious, and to the gods of Terre D’Ange for understanding, that we called their son not to do him ill but to seek to undo it. I asked the river to carry our blood far and far and far, into the sea and all the places she touches, and to fetch back the one who recognized it, if his spirit were free this night.

For a long moment, everything was quiet, so overpoweringly quiet it nearly felt like it was ringing in your ears. And then with a thin, warbling wail, the ghosts began to come, wading slowly out of the river, bloody and hollow-eyed and twisted, each of them bound in sickly green-glowing thread.

“M’aidez,” they moaned and gasped. “M’aidez, mamselle, s’il vous plait.” My D’angeline was not especially good, but they were spirits answering my call, and this was the twilight, and I _felt_ the direness of their pleas like a throb in my bleeding arm. _Help me, please help me_.

I snatched up the knife I had used before; it was old, bronze, and steeped in magic from my mother and her mother and hers, magic enough that it could touch the spirits as if they were flesh. I tried to cut their bindings, but I couldn’t. The green lines hummed and buzzed, biting and malevolent. The ghosts kept begging, and more appeared, struggling slowly out of the water.

“Moirin, it’s a _spell_ ,” Aniel whispered, voice thick with horror. “It’s the accursed spell of madness that took over Terre D’Ange ten years ago. Even in _death_ -”

Furious and frustrated, I dug the knife into the flesh of the first ghost’s wrists. I couldn’t break it, not with the spell itself miles and miles away, but I would free this tormented creature. She cried out, first in pain and then relief, as I pried the unbroken coils of green away from her. Her features, distorted until then, resolved into a pretty face, young – though older than Aniel and I – weeping.

“Desolé,” she murmured over and over. I _’m so sorry._ The wounds I made on her bled gleaming red in a sluggish tide. “I betrayed my country,” she whispered, as I started to cut into the next. “I betrayed by countrymen, and my gods.”

“ _No_ ” hissed Aniel, and he seized her by the arms, thumbs digging into her cuts. “ _You_ were betrayed,” he insisted, eyes flashing, with the kind of hard, gleaming, gem-like certainty that made it impossible to doubt him. “You were betrayed by people who called themselves friends and guests, and you were made to believe against your will. You have suffered.” Still squeezing her arms, and I could see she was wracked with pain, but her face was tipped back, gasping with relieve, giving herself over to it. “You have suffered _enough_ ,” Aniel growled, shaking a little with anger. He let go of her arms, pulled her into a tight embrace. She shuddered and sobbed and embraced him back, and then she faded from view. The nasty green energy lying tangled on the bank beside us hissed and sparked and spat, like a fire with water poured on it, winked away as well. 

I freed the next ghost, also shaking, a young soldier, who moaned with his head in his hands. He killed his people, he moaned, he killed his friends.

Aniel stepped forward.

It felt like it would never, ever end. Somehow we had called up the whole effluvium of a terrible civil war, and years of occupation, so many many restless dead. We freed them, and hurt them, and forgave them. I learned in excruciating detail what Aniel had deflected long ago, saying things in Terre D’Ange were ‘Bad.’ I suspect he learned his own meaning to new depths.

We did not tire. It was exhausting, and yet – something sustained us, bore us along, even as the river, dreaming backwards, bore the ghosts to us. The bear grease on my sternum was warm, a solid still point, and I felt those great bronze wings again, behind me and around me – around all of us.

Somehow, impossibly, when the last knot of green wire twitched and jerked away, it was dawn. We must have seen thousands of dead. But never, Aniel was sure, no matter how distorted some of them were, never our father. I let the twilight dissolve, and we slumped together, spent and silent, for a long time.

!

We snuck back into the castle, grateful for everyone else’s overindulgence the night before, given the state of us. We gnawed bread and cheese and some smoked ham, until we were alive again enough to discuss what had passed, and what to do next. It was much less a taxing conversation than I feared, because we were in utter agreement: the spell on Terre D’ange needed to be broken. 

We would go there. We would seek out our father, wherever he was lost or hiding. We would discover how it could be unmade, and its victims cleansed.

“I will talk to my mother,” Aniel said, “And Talorcan.” The Cruarch-in-all-but-name, because Drustan too was mad, and had not returned to Alba in many years, calling it a place of devils and confusion. “They will help me arrange quiet passage. And – I will tell my mother about the dreams. Perhaps she can – help me. With them. And I think she will be glad to know he is alive, even though she loves Aedhan.”

“I must speak to my mother too,” I said, wearily. “Tomorrow, I will meet you at the castle gate?”

Aniel nodded.

And so we parted.

!

I followed the whispers of the wind toward the circle of stones, not expecting to see my mother looking nearly as wrecked as I felt. She lumbered forward, her fur a mess, slumped and lurching, blood matted on her forelegs. I ran forward, embraced her huge, shaggy head, and she collapsed softly into the slight, fey form of human arms and legs.

“Mother! Are you alright?” She shook her head, eyes wet with tears, which I had never seen before in my life, not from her.

“I’m fine, dear heart. Just weak. It’s the price I pay to glimpse the future.” She sounded so sad, so _lost_

“Mother. I – I’ve decided to go. To Terre D’ange. There’s a terrible magic at work there. We have to set it right. And if we do, together, Aniel will know the goodness of magic too.”

I expected her to be stunned, consternated, terse and angry, but of course she wasn’t even surprised. 

“I saw you leaving,” she said simply. “Sometimes you return, and sometimes you don’t. I can tell you nothing about the branching paths. They all take place far from this land, out of my sight. But you always go.”

Her threatened tears didn’t fall, but mine did, and I hugged her very tightly.

“I’m sorry, mother. I’m so sorry. But I must.”

“No, no. _I’m_ sorry. By stone and sea and sky, Moirin, I’m so sorry.” She sounded like she had bark caught in her throat. “All these years I’ve been so determined you would save us. And you have. You already have. Even if he comes back without you, he is – wise and sad and terrible and _broken_ , but as Cruarch, he does not destroy our people. Oh my baby. I would have given my own _diadh-anam_ to save the Maghuin Dhonn, but now that I’ve done it, I cannot bear to lose you. Please come home. Whatever you must do across the sea, please come home to me.”

I heard it in her voice, what she couldn’t say. That she would never forgive herself, if I didn’t.

“I will,” I promised, though not by my _diadh-anam_. “I will, mother. And – I want you to meet Aniel, when we do come back. We’re all family.” If I did die, I hoped, she would seek him out. They could grieve together; they could be unforgiven together, and eventually ease the poison of it. A terrible idea, perhaps. But I had always preferred my own haphazard plans to her visions. 

She snorted, softly, a whuffled animalish sound, and the torn tenderness of the moment relented.

“You are a very strange child, Moirin mine,” she muttered, before taking hold of my hand. “Come along. There are herbs you will need to pack.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the Moirin you asked for! It is, however, a Moirin, and an AU chock full of magic, and I hope you enjoyed it. I've always been fascinated by the possibility of this future, and it was an absolute pleasure to get a chance to explore it. Moirin and Aniel have plenty of adventures to come, finding Imriel and helping to heal Terre D'Ange, but most of them echo _Kushiel's Mercy_ so much that it seemed gratuitous to write out. (Except, perhaps, a coda of Moirin descending to hell again, to discover the demon's name in her own way - but that is a another story.)


End file.
